


save your heart (for someone who leaves you breathless)

by lecornergirl



Series: forever just like this [3]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/M, just me being emotional about peraltiago tbh, or like a relationship study i guess?, this turned into kind of like a character study oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 13:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14569992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lecornergirl/pseuds/lecornergirl
Summary: Teddy was fine, but Jake leaves her breathless.





	save your heart (for someone who leaves you breathless)

**Author's Note:**

> so i challenged myself to write at least one work per fandom from here on out and this is my first, uh, victim i guess 
> 
> it's basically just me being emotional about peraltiago
> 
> title from the mayday parade song save your heart

Teddy was… fine. He complimented her date outfits, laughed at her jokes, opened the door for her, and was perfectly pleasant with her parents, never causing so much as a disagreement at the dinner table.

Teddy was fine, but he was also, well. Boring. He didn’t challenge her, never came up with anything crazier than moving a date from Friday night to Saturday, and looked down his nose at people who coloured outside the lines. Amy definitely stayed inside the lines herself, but the fundamental difference between her and Teddy was that she found it exhilarating when someone subverted her expectations. Teddy found it distasteful.

 

Jake lives his whole life outside the lines, and it leaves her breathless.

Jake is always coming up with a new prank, a new undercover backstory, a new joke, and it’s like he can sense when she’s in need of a good laugh. The day after a big perp slips through her fingers, the morning briefing starts with Charles sitting on a whoopee cushion and startling himself so badly he spills his coffee all over himself. Amy doesn’t know when Jake was able to place the cushion, since they came in together, but he squeezes her hand under the table and she’s so, so grateful for him.

 

Teddy complimented her outfits, sure, but Jake is supportive of everything Amy does (literally, everything). She’ll be making coffee in the break room, and he’ll drop by to tell her it’s the best coffee he’s ever had. He peers over her shoulder when she’s doing paperwork, whistles, and tells her she has the sexiest handwriting he’s ever seen. He high-fives her after she trips a perp he chases around a corner, grinning at the perp and proclaiming “that’s my girlfriend!”

More importantly, Jake’s there for all the big things. Teddy would probably have been annoyed that she was making sergeant before him, but Jake talks her through her worries about sitting the exam, takes her out to dinner to celebrate after it, and she swears there’s a tear in his eye when she gets the results and finds out she passed. He’s there on her first day with her new squad, making her breakfast before they head into the precinct. He tells her he’s known she’d make a great sergeant since the first day they met, and she swats his arm because that can’t be true, that was eight years ago.

“Fine,” he relents, “but I’ve known it for a long time, okay? You’re awesome, and I love you, and you’re going to be amazing.”

She smiles all the way to her first briefing, where she pours water all over the floor. It’s a work in progress.

That night, she tells Jake all about it, and he puts on the third Harry Potter film, her ultimate comfort movie. She tucks herself into his side, his fingers drawing patterns on her hip, and she doesn’t know how she got so lucky.

The next day, it goes a little better, and he orders her favourite takeout to celebrate.

 

They have big conversations, too, and every now and then she flashes back to Teddy talking about pilsners and wonders how she lasted as long as she did. They’re talking about what will happen if Jake goes to jail, if Hawkins succeeds in framing him and Rosa, and as she’s telling him she’ll wait for him, keep working the case to bring him home to her, Amy realises with a jolt: she wouldn’t have waited for Teddy. She wouldn’t have waited for anyone she’s dated, but for Jake, she’d wait the entire fifteen-year sentence if she had to. In an ideal world, obviously, it won’t be anywhere near fifteen years, but she will if it comes down to it.

Briefly, she considers proposing to him, then and there, but it doesn’t feel like the right time. When they get engaged, she wants it to be because they can’t bear to not be engaged for a moment longer, not because he might go to jail. If the jury finds him not guilty, she decides, then she’ll propose. If they find him guilty… she’ll figure it out.

She can identify the exact moment she knows he’s going to jail. Her phone buzzes with a text, she connects the money to Flaxton Hill Farms, and Matthew Langdon talks about how honourable Melanie Hawkins is. Her blood turns to ice, and she sees Jake realise it at the same moment, his shoulders stiffening at first and then dropping in defeat.

Amy’s surer than ever, then. She’ll wait for Jake Peralta as long as it takes.

 

In the end, it doesn’t take fifteen years, but it’s the longest eight weeks of Amy’s life. It’s not the first time that Jake’s been away, but the days have never been this interminable. His time undercover in the mafia wasn’t hard, because Amy was dating Teddy and only occasionally thought about Jake’s confession and wondered how he was doing. The six months in witness protection were harder, but Figgis wasn’t half as formidable a foe as Melanie Hawkins, and she knew it was only a matter of time before they got Jake and Holt back. Also, the only thing keeping them in Florida was the knowledge that a mobster was out to kill them, not bars and barbed wire and solitary confinement. Knowing that it could be as long as fifteen years makes it hard to even get out of bed, some days. Hearing his voice helps, but it also makes it worse, because the phone is illegal and half the time when he calls she can hear someone getting beaten up in the background—sometimes it’s him—and none of that is conducive to not worrying.

They finally find the jewels and Jake comes home, and Amy doesn’t quite know what to do. She asks if he wants to talk about it, but he shakes his head, so she holds him, pulls him as close to her body as she can, contents herself in the fact that he’s back, and if she has anything to do with it he’s never leaving again. The thought of proposing is still there, in the back of her mind, but… it’s not the right time, not yet.

He falls asleep soon after, but she lies awake into the small hours, stroking his hair and convincing herself that he’s real, he’s really came back to her.

 

Teddy wasn’t into grand gestures, and Amy was glad, because she didn’t think she was either. Never mind that when Jake took her on the bet date, he made a huge show of everything, and she kind of loved it. She told herself it was because it wasn’t real, and that actual grand gestures are performative and annoying.

Then Jake proposes during the Halloween heist, and it’s everything she never knew she always wanted. It’s grand, without being public: Jake clearly put a lot of work into it, but the actual proposal is just the two of them in the evidence locker. It takes her a moment to believe it’s really happening, his speech is a little bumbling but incredibly sincere, and it’s so quintessentially _them_ , she’s glad he proposed first because nothing she came up with would have been half as good as this.

 

Teddy was fine, but Jake stands at the altar with tears in his eyes when she walks towards him, and whispers “noice” under his breath when the officiant pronounces them husband and wife, and Amy wouldn’t have it any other way.

 


End file.
